PC problem

[McLaughlin]

So about a week ago my PC blue screened on me three times in a row. When I booted it back up the fourth time I just left it alone and went to bed. The next day I had a popup from Windows waiting for me saying it detected a problem with my hard disk, but since then it had been fine.

Until now.

About an hour ago it started to get really unresponsive, so I tried to shut it down. It stayed at the "Logging Off" screen for about ten minutes. At that point I figured it probably wasn't going to finish on its own, so I pulled the power cord out. After I plugged it back in it restarted itself but it's been over half an hour and it hasn't made it past the "Starting Windows" screen. The fans are super loud while it's booting so I pulled the power again to let the whole thing cool down a bit.

Any ideas as to what's going on and how to fix it? Can't call tech support until Monday.

[Xefi]

have you try cleaning up the inside of your computer
and graphic card? my computer use to freeze back
then over and over until one day i decided to clean
the inside of my computer from the dirt.

i clean:
the graphic card
the cooling fans
blew some dust out of the rams

i haven't ran into any freezing problems ever since.
maybe it can work for you as well. :burger:

[McLaughlin]

I clean it out every two weeks, but thanks for the suggestion. I'm thinking it's something to do with the hard drive but I have no idea how to check, and at this point it still doesn't get past the "Starting Windows" screen.

[Xefi]

i'm not an expert at this but i'll try. when you first start your
computer, it was one of those F1, F2 buttons you press to go
to the menu or something. i believe from that menu you can
check to see if your hard drive is still working or not.

I did have my internal hard drive fail once and the computer didn't
go past the Windows just like yours. It could be your hard drive.
i hope you have back up of your files. fail hard drive really suck.

[Randomness]

What error code are you getting when it blue screens?

That should help narrow down the problem.

[McLaughlin]

Can't get it to blue screen anymore, it just gets hung up trying to boot windows. The only part of the error I remember was just the generic "Windows has encountered a fatal error and needs to reboot."

Between the three blue screens in a row last weekend and now, there haven't been any issues. It hasn't blue screened tonight either (was waiting for it to when it became unresponsive because that's how it went last weekend, but it never did which is why I tried to shut it down).

Kinda hoping through force of will I can get it to boot once more at least because there's some stuff on there I haven't had a chance to back up yet...

[McLaughlin]

Welp, after waiting 20 minutes for the startup repair thing to actually start and another 20 minutes for it to do it's thing, I've got "A hard disk problem is preventing Windows from starting. Contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer to see if you need to repair or replace the disk."

So in lieu of calling the manufacturer (pretty sure tech support only operates on weekdays), anything else I can try?

[Blue-Hawk]

Sounds like you have a corrupt hard drive. Happened to me a few years ago. Tech support usually runs 7 days a week unless you have parts made by some third party, shady company.

How old is the pc?

[Xefi]

if you could wait for the weekdays to come, then wait.
if not, i suggest you can go out and buy an internal "Western
Digital" brand for the hard drive and replace the old dead one.
you'll probably have to reboot the whole system again back to
factory shipping.

it was what i did when my hard drive fail back then. i recommend
Western Digital because their brand hasn't fail me since. Sea Gate
hard drive fail me twice, so i don't trust that brand anymore.

these type of failure happen. i also suggest you buy a 2 TB external
hard drive to put your important back up data. i never put anything in
my internal hard drive, at least not my main one i use for the computer
to start up. i'll only lose my installed programs and games if my main
one fails, but i can always reinstalled those. losing my precious pictures,
music, and video data would make me pretty sad, but i always back those up.

sucks for you buddy. hope you can get your stuffs back.

[McLaughlin]

Sounds like you have a corrupt hard drive. Happened to me a few years ago. Tech support usually runs 7 days a week unless you have parts made by some third party, shady company.

How old is the pc?

Only six months old. Their phone support is 7 days a week, I mistook that for their onsite help, which only runs on weekdays. About to give them a call.

I've got backups of most everything except whatever I did yesterday, so I didn't lose much. Just sort of shocked the disk died so quickly. I had my last PC for six years and it's still got the factory hard drive in it. :/